The Department of Regulation and Licensing (DRL) and the Medical Examining Board (MEB) have opened investigations involving eight individuals who allegedly wrote medical excuses for individuals attending rallies at the Capitol in February.

Based on information provided by various complainants, DRL identified 11 people who were asked to provide an explanation to the department about their activities at the Capitol. Based on the complaints and the information received by DRL, a screening panel consisting of three members of the MEB has decided to open investigations on eight individuals. Investigations were not opened as to the other three individuals because the panel concluded no violations had occurred.

A more extensive fact-finding process will now occur on the cases which have been opened to determine if any violations of law occurred. Recommendations will be made at the end of each investigation as to whether disciplinary action should be pursued.

The DRL and MEB are charged with licensing qualified, competent physicians and enforcing discipline against physicians whose practice is substandard.

Unfortunately, New Hampshire Governor John Lynch (D) has said he will veto the bill when it reaches his desk. While the Senate has a veto proof majority in favor of the legislation, the House does not at this point. So the bill is not totally doomed to become law.

Big Labor is already attacking the legislation as an assault on the working class. However, the right-to-work bill does not make it illegal to be part of a union–it simply gives workers the right to choose if they want to be part of one.

That sort of argument from the labor unions shows how weak they are. They realize that most of the workers would rather forgo having their paychecks shanghaied by the unions. So they resort to such attacks as the one above where they claim the working class is under assault. They aren’t, they are just being given the option to freely associate with the union.

After all, if the union offered everything it claims to and is a good representative of the employee, wouldn’t everyone want to join anyways?

Hopefully the House will come up with the votes to overturn the veto of Governor Lynch. This will be a long fight.

The Republican-controlled Oklahoma Senate dealt organized labor another defeat on Tuesday when it voted to repeal a collective bargaining law.

The 29-19 vote means that some of the state's fastest-growing cities no longer will be required to collectively bargain with sanitation workers and other non-uniformed workers. The measure already passed the Oklahoma House and now goes to Governor Mary Fallin, a Republican, who is expected to sign it into law.

The bill would repeal a law passed in 2004, when the Oklahoma Legislature and the governorship were controlled by Democrats. The law required cities with populations over 35,000 to engage in collective bargaining with non-uniformed workers, though it did not affect Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Norman and Muskogee, which already were engaged in collective bargaining.

Some cities have complained the 2004 law was arbitrary in selecting cities with populations of 35,000 or more for mandatory collective bargaining. In Edmond, a thriving city of 81,000 north of Oklahoma City, city manager Larry Stevens said it cost at least $50,000 annually to collectively bargain with nonuniformed employees who voted to join a union.

Repeal of the 2004 law means cities will have to decide whether they want to authorize collective bargaining with their workers.

With Republicans now in charge of Oklahoma state government, organized labor has been on the defensive this year, just as it has been in Wisconsin and Ohio, where collective bargaining rights have been curbed.

The Oklahoma Legislature earlier passed a bill making it easier for local school districts to fire teachers by taking away their right to appeal terminations to a district court.

In Oklahoma, a right-to-work state in which workers are not required to join a union to hold a job, a majority vote is required before municipal workers can be represented by a union and engage in collective bargaining.

Alinsky Nation.

Leftwing political payback

Contact the editor.

"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared." — Cicero, 106 BC-43 BC